Sister Of Gilgo Beach Victim Megan Waterman: 'She Was My Best Friend'

LONG ISLAND, NY — After suspected Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann, 59, was charged last month with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello — three of the Gilgo Beach victims — Amanda Gove spoke to Patch about how her sister Megan's loss has shattered her family's lives.

Since 2010, at least 11 sets of remains have been found, believed to be related to the Gilgo Beach killings. Police have searched for a serial killer ever since. At least four of the killings included strangulation, and two showed signs of blunt-force trauma. The cause of death remains inconclusive for some victims.

Shannan Gilbert's remains were found in 2011 in Oak Beach. She was a New Jersey escort who disappeared on May 1, 2010, after meeting a client for sex on Oak Beach.The search for Gilbert first led to the bodies of four other sex workers, known as the "Gilgo Four": Barnes, 25 ; Barthelemy, 24; Waterman, 22; and Costello, 27 — all of whom were strangled and stuffed in burlap bags.

Last year, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison released video evidence of victim Waterman, 22, and 911 audio of Gilbert from the night she disappeared to enlist the public’s help in solving the murders.

Gove said for years since her sister's death, she's stayed out of the spotlight; she and Waterman shared the same father and shared a bond that transcends time and tragedy.

"She was not only blood sister — she was my soul sister," Gove said.

Waterman, who was last seen on June 6, 2010, was from Scarborough, Maine and had been advertising as a sex worker and staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, according to Suffolk County's Gilgonews.com website. She left the hotel about 1:30 a.m. to meet a client and was never seen again, according to reports.

But for her family, including her sister Gove, the days and months since have been dark with grief. Megan, they said, would never have left her daughter Liliana, then 3, who she cherished.

Her body was found on December 13, 2010.

The agony and search for answers have colored every day since for Gove and the others who loved Waterman and who remember her not as a "sex worker" — a label that has persisted since the women's deaths — but as a young woman with a life to lead and dreams never realized.

The label "sex worker" fills Gove with anger.

"She was so much more than that. She was a sister. She was a mother. Sex worker — that's not who she was," Gove said.

Although they didn't grow up in the same household, Gove's early memories of Waterman include jumping on the bed with her sister, holding hands — and playing outside together.

"She was super sweet and bubbly," she said.

Later in life, they reconnected and forged a connection that was rich with love.

"Megan was my best friend," Gove said. "We lived together for 8 years. From the time I was 14 on, I spent almost every day with that girl. We were inseparable. We were pregnant together — and had our kids two weeks apart."

Losing her sister left her life irrevocably altered, Gove said. "It was awful," she said. "It was the worst thing I ever went through — and that I'm still going through. I always told her, 'I don't know what I would do without you.' I still don't know what to do without her."

She added: "Losing her changed my life 1000 percent. I will never be the same. I am still fighting for her."

Haunted by questions, Gove said she has spent months conducting her own research.

When Heuermann was arrested, Gove said: "I'm not sure I knew what to think. It was a curveball. I was shocked."

In her heart, questions still linger; Gove believes that it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that there might be more to uncover. "I hope she gets justice," she said. "I hope that no one else has to feel the pain that I went through."

It cuts deep, Gove said, that officials released video evidence of Waterman, more than a decade after she was reported missing.

"Are you kidding me? That should have been released that day or the next day or as soon as possible, not now," she said.

Gove said the video appears to show another woman was seen walking out after her sister, who could have possibly been an eyewitness. "Now, all these years later, do you think she will remember what kind of car my sister got into?" she asked.

She added that she personally feels mistakes may have been made, missteps taken, that could have ended up "sabotaging the case."

And always, there is the lingering sense of grief. "Sometimes, I wish I wasn't as close to Megan as I was. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much. But I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love the memories we made."

Gove and Waterman reconnected when Gove saw their brother Greg roller skating at a rink. He told Gove that her sister Megan would be coming soon — and from that point on, the girls were always together.

"She gave me the biggest hug," she said. "Seeing Megan and Greg, it literally felt like I was home. I can't explain it, it felt so great."

Although she missed her mother and sister, when it was time to leave Waterman and go home from her summer visit, Gove said both girls were crying. Gove's father gave the okay and the two continued to live together and create lifetime memories.

"We'd go to the salon to get our nails done. We literally were inseparable," she said. "She was the best sister I could have asked for."

Later on, Waterman and Gove had their babies just two weeks apart.

Her sister's death devastated their family. At the funeral, her brother Greg was "broken," Gove said. "To see my older brother cry, it was a shock to me. To see him cry, to see him looking so broken — it crushed me."

Finding her sister's body, while heart-rending, did bring some sense of closure, Gove said. "We got to bring her home."

But, she added, the loss of her sister is wound that will never heal.

"Do I want to live my life without her? No. It's literally hell. I had a nightmare, every single night, a repetitive nightmare where I could hear her saying my name, 'Amanda, Amanda.' I didn't want to go to bed."

Speaking about her beloved sister now, Gove hopes to give a voice and face to a young woman who meant everything to her.

"I don't want Megan to be forgotten," she said.

Reflecting on her sister, she said, "She loved pizza. She loved bacon. I couldn't even cook bacon. God, losing her killed me. She was my best friend."

They both loved hearts, Gove said, another thing they shared.

And, she said, she feels her presence all the time.

"I know she's still with me. There have been so many signs," Gove said. "She's still with me, I can feel it. She comes to me in my dreams."

She told the story of a ring. "Megan was wearing a ring, it was super shiny and pretty, and I told her, 'I love your ring,'" she said. "She said, 'Oh, thanks! Here, you can have it.'"

A few months later, when Waterman disappeared, Gove found out that she'd been prostituting, and was angry, because she loved her so much; the two hadn't spoken for a while, something that still brings her pain.

One day, her mother was moving and Gove went to help; she took off the ring and put it on a windowsill. She accidentally left the ring and called her nana, asking her to put it in a safe place; her grandmother said she put it in a gold box in her bedroom.

Later, when Gove went to pick up the ring, the box was empty. She, her grandmother, and her mother searched for the ring, her last connection to her missing sister. "I was crushed, devastated," Gove said. "It was literally the last thing she gave me; she took it offer own finger and put it on mine. It was so meaningful. I was crushed."

But, much later, her little brother came up, "whipped out his hand, and opened his palm, and there was my sister's ring," Gove said. "I was crying, asking him, 'Where did you find it?'"

He'd found it under the lining of the box, the box that had been checked so many times in the months since it was lost.

"My grandmother was looking at me, with tears in her eyes, and said, 'I think this is a message from Megan, a way of letting her know that she's okay — but she's gone.'"

Her sister's body was found soon after, in December.

Thinking back, Gove smiles as she recalls the pranks the sisters played on each other, the closeness they shared that resonates, still.

Gove said when she heard her sister was missing, she was livid that the story of her disappearance wasn't reported on for two weeks. When she read it in the paper, she said, "'God, take this pain from me,'" she said.

From the first moment that she lost her sister, Gove has said she's felt signs. "It sounds crazy, but I knew she was by the water, by the beach," she said; she'd seen an image on her phone at the time her sister was reported missing of their hallmark two hearts, etched in the sand, and the Michael Jackson song "You're Not Alone," playing.

"I felt so broken, so alone. Alone was probably the biggest feeling I could describe when Megan passed," Gove said.

When she heard her sister was missing, although she lived miles away, she felt the strong need to search Long Island beaches. "It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. I felt helpless, I was miles away," she said. "And that's where she was found."

Even now, Gove talks about her sister all the time.

She's seen a medium, who's told her that her sister wants her to "pay attention" to her dreams. Recently, she's begged her sister for a sign, and has since had vivid dreams; in one , she saw her sister and felt as though she'd hugged her.

Gove said there were two puppies born on her sister's birthday, one named Luna Blue. "That was the name I always said I would give a girl puppy, 'Blue,' after the dog that found my sister," Gove said.

In another dream, Gove said she feels as though she's with her sister in her last minutes, she hears someone screaming, raging with anger at her, and finds herself frozen in fear as her attacker approaches. She's also seen a home, a garage, in her dreams that she's never seen before in real life.

The dreams, the signs, have left Gove unsettled, feeling as though there's more to learn about her sister's case — although so far, there is no solid proof to substantiate what she's feeling.

"I don't know what to think anymore," she said.

And always, always, there is the yearning, the ache of missing the sister the world never knew — a woman who loved completely and whose laughter and smile will leave a forever hole. The mother who never got to see her daughter grow up. The sister who's missing at every holiday table. The young woman, her sister said, that Megan Waterman never got to evolve into — her life ripped short by terror and violence.

Waterman, she said, was a beloved family member and friend, a human voice and heart — not just the sex worker she was on one night that ended her life and all that was to come.

"Those headlines don't define her," she said.